Greeting viewers with bright-blue acrylic wings, a tall canvas depicting a thunderbird of Native American legend looms near the entrance of the newest traveling exhibition at the Chrysler Museum of Art.
A man’s face is painted into and peers out of the bird’s chest. The painting, “Thunderbird with Inner Spirit,” is a self-portrait by one of the first Indigenous North American artists, Norval Morrisseau, to have work displayed in mainstream fine art museums, starting in the 1960s.
The portrait is one of several works by Morrisseau included in “Early Days: Indigenous Art from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection,” that are on display at the Chrysler through Sept. 1.
The first survey of Canadian Indigenous art to be presented internationally, the show features some of Canada’s most renowned Indigenous artists and a wide range of art forms.
Courtesy of Dana Claxton
“Headdress-Shadae” by Dana Claxton, on view at the Chrysler through Sept. 1.
Color pencil drawings, photography, sculptures, tapestries and centuries-old beadwork are included in this exhibition, which is divided into thematic, sectioned galleries.
One section, “Vestiges of Exchange,” deals with Colonial and Native contact and centers on works inspired by Great Lakes ceremonial attire of the 1700s. Such works include wampum belts made of beads and used to mark the conclusion of negotiations.
A plaque reads: “The trading of objects also recalls the trauma of contagion, reminding us of the often-fatal exchanges that took place between settler and Indigenous cultures.”
A nearby artwork, “COVID-19 Mask No. 8” by Ruth Cuthand, resembles a medical face mask embroidered with glass beads. It represents the inequities in health care that persist in Indigenous communities.
But the exhibition features humor, too.
In a gallery titled “Wit and Satire,” a large painting by Kent Monkman, “Wedding at Sodom,” depicts a scene in which his alter ego — named Miss Chief Eagle Testickle — brings an “arrow of desire” to a cowboy during a gay wedding.
Large, beautifully intricate ceremonial masks of red cedar, made by Henry Speck Jr., hang from the ceiling in the gallery devoted to the coastal Pacific Northwest.
Faye HeavyShield’s work “Sisters” is positioned at the center of a gallery devoted to women artists. As a child, she and her five sisters were sent to a school where they were abused and forbidden to speak their native language; the work’s 12 high-heeled shoes are thought to represent the sisters “circled in solidarity” to defend themselves and one another against threats, and the shoes’ cloven toes allude to the deer hooves “suggesting the animal’s attributes of elegance, strength and delicacy,” according to the museum.
Toni Hafkenscheid / Courtesy of The Chrysler Museum of Art
“Sisters” by Faye HeavyShield, on display at the Chrysler.
The show was organized by the largest publicly funded gallery in Canada, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, which has worked for decades to expand its collection of Indigenous works — a goal shared by the Chrysler, according to Chelsea Pierce.
The McKinnon Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Chrysler, Pierce said that her recent work has focused on making new acquisitions of Indigenous artwork and that the museum is striving to increase the visibility of works by Native Americans.
Chrysler Museum of Art
“Flying Spirit,” by Nick Sikkuark, on view through Sept. 1.
Just check out the front of the museum, she said.
In 2022, the Chrysler installed a mixed-media light box outside its main entrance doors — formed by big, yellow, boxy and decorated letters. The piece, placed in consultation with the museum’s Native advisory council, spells what the people of the Powhatan Chiefdom called their land on which the museum now stands: TSENACOMMACAH.
Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8138, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com
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If you go
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Through Sept. 1
Where: Chrysler Museum of Art, One Memorial Place, Norfolk
Cost: Free
Details: chrysler.org
